


The Hiketeia

by miss_belivet



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman (Comics), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: (-ish), Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Consent, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Master & Servant, Protection, Redemption, Smut, The Furies - Freeform, The Hiketeia, in which diana protects isabel from bloodthirsty mobs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-02-05 07:25:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12789663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_belivet/pseuds/miss_belivet
Summary: Dr. Poison arrives at the doorstep of the Themysciran Embassy on her knees.(A WonderPoison crossover of the DCEU's Wonder Woman and Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman comic, The Hiketeia.)





	1. The Ritual

**Author's Note:**

> A small note: Because this blends comic & film canon, Diana has established the Themysciran embassy in New York and now works as an ambassador of the Amazons, Wonder Woman, and Greek gods in Man's World. Please, don't ask me where or how she obtained the resources to do so immediately after World War I, but I'm just going to assume that Etta did something a little underhanded with the fake Sir Patrick's wealth to buy the building, and then Diana donated the remaining sum to relief efforts.

The doors rattled.

Diana was certain of it. Behind the set of thick slabs of mahogany that guarded the inner workings of the Themysciran Embassy from prying eyes, the tall glass doors that led into the vestibule clattered. They hadn’t made such a noise since Diana’s second week in the building four years ago; Etta Candy replaced the old, loose panes before New York’s chilly winter winds could penetrate them.

The doors rattled again.

Diana crept forward, beyond the elegant foyer and the tall marble columns that reminded her of Themyscira, past the bust of Athena and the potted yellow hyacinths, vibrant despite the icy weather outside. She slipped on hand into the false pocket in her skirt, winding the lasso around her palm, and pushed open the first, and then the second, set of doors.

A woman knelt on the stoop at her feet.

Her grip on the lasso eased, and she bent toward the crouched figure. It was not uncommon for women to come to the embassy for help; Diana made sure, in the hard, early days, that they created a safe haven for those that man’s world slighted. She and Etta kept a pantry in the kitchen with meals and toiletries for them; several of the suites in the upper floors had been renovated for temporary use. Diana assumed that word had spread enough that most of the homeless women nearby knew to ring the bell of the door to the kitchen for aid.

Apparently that wasn't the case.

She placed a gentle hand on the woman’s arm, her touch soft and cautious. "May I help—"

The woman interrupted her in flawless Ancient Greek.

“I am Isabel Maru of Madrid, Spain. I offer myself in supplication to you, Diana of Themyscira. I come without protection. I come without means. Without honor or hope. Nothing but...”

Dr. Maru seemed to choke, the breath catching in her throat. Her voice rasped, a painful, horrible sound, as if she were struggling for air as she spoke. “But… myself… to beg for your protection.”

Diana swallowed hard.

She hadn’t recognized Dr. Maru’s dark hair or the slight frame, and she didn’t know that she would have if Isabel hadn’t identified herself. Diana had only seen her once before, during a night so filled with rage and pain that all she could really remember was a red haze.

But then Dr. Maru lifted her head.

She was watching Diana with raw desperation, her hair in wild disarray and her arms trembling with the effort of holding herself up. Her face was twisted with scar tissue; the mutilation cut through her cheek, leaving a row of dull teeth visible to the eye.

And Diana _remembered_.

She looked exactly as she had five years ago, trembling beneath Diana on that burning tarmac in Belgium. She even wore the same coat, though it was now threadbare and stained and worn through at the elbows.

 _Destroy her, Diana!_ The ghost of Ares’ roar whispered in her ear, and Diana shuddered.

She didn’t enjoy remembering Isabel Maru. The memory of how close she came to murdering someone in cold blood always chilled her to the core. She kept tabs on the woman from a distance until Dr. Maru simply _vanished,_ disappearing into one of Madrid’s balmy summer nights. Diana investigated and Sammy searched, but their efforts yielded nothing, no friends with a forwarding address and no trace of her whereabouts left in her well-appointed home in Spain.

After two years, they assumed she had simply died inhaling one of her own toxic gasses in an undercover laboratory somewhere.

On the stoop beneath Diana, Isabel’s expression twitched, what remained of her lip curling, but her head fell back to the granite step once more. She prostrated herself at Diana’s feet, her back hunched with the shame of it all. “Please… In your shadow I will serve. By your breath, I will breathe. By your mercy, I will live.”

Diana didn’t— _couldn't_ —interrupt. Shock stilled every muscle in her body, even as her nerves jittered with the sudden awareness of what Isabel was asking.

“With my whole heart and everything I am, I beg you in Zeus’s name, who watches over all supplicants… Accept my plea.”

The hand on the lasso rose to cover Diana’s mouth.

 _“Please.”_ The plea cut through the icy air, unscripted this time, and Isabel’s hands reached out, hovering uncertainly beside Diana’s ankles, as if she meant to clutch them but thought better of it. “Accept my plea.”

And then Isabel raised her head again, her scarred mouth gaping, a large bruise coloring her right temple purple and yellow, and her watery, red-rimmed eyes stared up at Diana, pleading, until Diana realized that she could not turn her away.

She had no more right to condemn Isabel Maru than she had five years ago.

So, with a deep breath, she bent again and took Dr. Maru’s arm in her hand and said, “Rise.”

She helped Isabel to her feet, guiding her shivering new charge into the foyer of Themyscira House. She fell into Diana’s arms after only a handful of steps, hesitant fingers clutching at her shirt.

“You have made hiketeia, and I am justly supplicated,” Diana said into Isabel’s ear, and a heaving sob wracked the slight body in her arms. “My home is yours, and you are welcome under my care.”

And with that, the vow was sealed. The heat that always accompanied ancient occult rites burned through her consciousness, warming her to her bones, even as a simultaneous chill of trepidation crawled up her spine.

She knew the price of hiketeia; an intelligent woman like Isabel Maru would know that price, too. Whether they liked it or not, it would be paid—and, casting a glance over Isabel’s shoulder at the street beyond the embassy, it would be paid in blood.

It always was.

Isabel shivered violently. Maudlin thoughts would have to wait; Diana had a supplicant in need of a warm blanket and, judging by the sharp jut of her hips beneath her hands, a hearty meal.

“It’s cold outside tonight. Come with me, and I will get you something to eat.”


	2. Chapter 2

Diana sighed, pushed a lock of hair away from Isabel’s forehead, and gathered the pens and papers that littered the coverlet around her sleeping form.

The six weeks since Isabel's arrival had been spent watching over her bedrest in Diana’s bedroom; it was the nicest room in the embassy, and  _hiketeia_ demanded that Isabel have it. She had been more malnourished than Diana estimated, and multiple broken ribs and fingers had been added to a growing list of injuries that Diana counted that first night; beneath her threadbare coat and ragged dress, Isabel had been little more than dark, discolored skin and fractured bone. She barely kept herself upright for her first meal in the embassy’s kitchen, and even that reappeared when her stomach decided that a simple peanut butter sandwich was too rich. Then, half an hour after entering Diana’s home as her supplicant, Isabel Maru collapsed, unconscious, on the cold kitchen floor.

They didn't speak much after the exchange on the doorstep, which only made the situation more stilted and uncomfortable. Diana made the ritual offerings of food, drink, and a warm place by the wood-burning stove, and Isabel accepted them with silent nods that, although mortified, still looked haughty on her pointed, seared features.

(She had brushed Diana off, insisting on limping down to the kitchen on her own by using the wall as to support her weight, after the embassy’s door was closed and locked behind her. Hot, red patches on her cheeks hinted at humiliation, so Diana kept quiet and watched, her arms outstretched to catch her.)

That night's silence lasted for weeks as they watched one another, Isabel from her place in Diana's bed and Diana from the chair beside it, but that did not mean that Diana wasn't terribly tempted to talk to her.

On the contrary, she burned with curiosity every time they shared a pot of tea while she watched Isabel push pencils over dry, untaxing paperwork—simple assignments that gave Isabel a chance to occupy her mind with thank-you notes and addressing envelopes—to satisfy the servitude that _hiketeia_ required of her. Every night, when Diana entered the room to administer medicines and pile on quilts, she yearned to ask Isabel where she had hidden for two long years, where she learned to invoke _hiketeia,_ why she chose such a damning ritual to bind the both of them, who had beaten her until her bones had _snapped..._

But she never asked.

If _hiketeia_ required that Diana give Isabel total grace and protection, then Isabel was compelled to repay her with honesty, service, and gratitude in return. Her life was Diana's, just as the ritual vows stated, and the weight of Isabel's enforced servitude grated on Diana's nerves; she often wondered what her mother would say if she knew that Diana had, for all intents and purposes, a _slave_. Just the thought left a bitter taste in her mouth.

(Nonetheless, she was still intensely aware of the lasso whenever it swung against her hip, an innocuous length of golden rope until she might take an opportunity to wrap it around Isabel's wrist, finally ask those questions and get her answers...)

But Isabel had been well-behaved and reserved—respectful, even, as respectful as Diana imagined such a proud, humiliated woman could be—since her arrival six weeks ago, and Diana felt no need to resort to any extreme measures. As wary as she had been of giving Dr. Maru a place in her life, she was far warier of shattering the fragile, spun-glass trust that grew between the two of them as Isabel healed.

“Isabel,” she murmured, setting aside the papers. Not asking questions did not mean not learning, however; no, after a month and a half by her bedside, she knew very well how temperamental her charge could be upon waking, so Diana only pressed lightly on her shoulder, smiling as an eyebrow twitched, then the tip of her nose. “Isabel Maru…”

Isabel groaned, and then, as always, the scarred side of her face was turned and pressed into her pillow.

Success.

“I have coffee and a book.” She spoke in a low sing-song, taunting, daring Isabel to open her eyes. “Etta can't read Arabic, so I require your services as my supplicant.”

 _“You_ can read Arabic,” Isabel groaned, her voice hoarse and thick with sleep, but her eyes opened, squinting in the bright morning sunlight streaming in through the tall windows that had once convinced Diana to claim this bedroom for herself. Then, stretching, she muttered something that sounded like  _You can read everything._

“Is that jealousy I hear, Dr. Maru?” Diana didn’t wait for Isabel's sharp tongue to craft a cutting response. “The League of Nations is convening this morning, so I don’t have the time to read this myself. You can take notes?”

Isabel pushed herself gingerly up onto her elbows and raised a brow. When she did not argue, Diana knew that she had won.

Isabel would take extremely thorough notes. It was another thing Diana learned during her tenure as an makeshift nursemaid: Isabel responded best to a challenge, and better still if her intellect was challenged.

Yes, she would make it very clear how well she understood the ancient, obscure source material.

Just out of spite, thought, Diana knew she would write the notes in her cuneiform code,simply because she no longer liked to be called Dr. Maru.

That had come as a shock to Diana, just a week into Isabel’s stay. That Isabel Maru was a prideful woman was apparent in her dossier—more so in the few years she had stayed in Valencia after the war, garnering herself a reputation as a neighborhood witch among the children who lived nearby—so Diana first addressed her as Dr. Maru in her own attempt to settle the tension between them and acknowledge that Isabel was more than a mere slave to her whim.

 

* * *

 

_“You are restless, Dr. Maru. I know we spoke of delaying your service until—”_

_“Isabel.”_

_If she were anyone else, Diana might have startled at the cold interruption. She settled into her policy of asking no questions within hours of Isabel's arrival—_ ask her no questions, she will tell you no truths, _she once thought wryly, three days after their_ hiketeia _had been invoked—and she was not about to test Isabel's legendary temper or betray the niceties that_ hiketeia _required from both of them._

_Isabel stared at her, her dark eyes finally lacking the heavily lidded, heavily drugged haze that the morphine had induced for the past week. “My name. Isabel.”_

_So Diana nodded and turned her head to hide the way her lips quirked upward._

_“Very well, Isabel. Are you well enough to sit up? I need someone to do some research for me, and I think you might enjoy it…”_

 

* * *

 

Diana set the tray with the books and Isabel's breakfast on her supplicant's lap, pleased that the dull reading would be done by someone other than herself.

The motion, however, gave Isabel a chance to eye Diana's exposed legs. “Wearing your armor to meet with the League of Nations? You are trying provoke them.”

Diana grinned, cocked a hip, and held out her arms, like Isabel was Etta, like she was any other friend, saying, _You do not approve?_

Isabel snorted and shook her head. Diana laughed at the indignant toss of Isabel’s hair. Isabel reminded her of Antiope’s horse when she did that, the stubborn, ornery beast.

“Soon enough you will accompany me to these meetings, and I am sure you will show the delegates what a proper aide to the ambassador of the Amazons should wear,” Diana teased, turning to the wardrobe and rifling through it until she found her cloak.

“Yes, I am sure that they will all be salivating to string my body up on the London Bridge in my impeccable new suit.” Isabel’s voice was dry and biting, but Diana heard the subtle thread of amusement laced through her words.

“Oh, Isabel…” Diana wrapped herself in the cloak, pausing for a moment to secure it at the waist with a thick leather belt, and backed toward the door. “As long as you continue doing my paperwork, they will have to get through me in order to harm you.”

“As long as I do not release you from the bond of _hiketeia,”_ Isabel said beneath her breath, truly bitter this time, and focused her attention on doctoring the mug of coffee in front of her.

Diana frowned.

"I made my vows  _willingly—"_

"Because I was pathetic, begging at your feet."

"And you will not release me until you are ready."

Isabel froze, the scarred side of her mouth gaping, and Diana nodded once, sharply. They both knew could not order Isabel to release or retain their _hiketeia._ It was the only power Isabel retained once bound to Diana: the ability to sever the relationship and release the host, and Diana would never have any say in when Isabel released her.

It was a clause she had known about when she accepted Isabel's plea, so she tried to take it in her stride.

 _(Servitude for servitude,_ her mind had whispered in the embassy's doorway that night, _and what better place for Dr. Poison than in your service?)_

Isabel looked appalled.

Diana opened the door and said, "I will be back in time for dinner."

That brief feeling of victory, of winning a fight against an impossible opponent, felt dry and heavy rattling around in her skull as she made her way through their living quarters, past the bustling embassy on the first floor, and into the street.

 

* * *

 

The door snapped shut, and Isabel's head fell back onto her pillow with a dull _flump_.

She had to stop being cruel. She could not afford to be cruel toward the woman who stood over her—in every way, now—carrying Isabel’s fate alongside every inch of height and muscle she possessed with ease, like a terrifying, elegant weapon.

Yes, that is what Diana reminded Isabel of: the dagger with a hilt of bejeweled, carved jade she had once seen in some obnoxious German aristocrat’s home. A beautiful, deadly piece of art with an extraordinarily well-wrought blade. The effect multiplied whenever Diana wore her armor and, one late night several weeks ago, multiplied exponentially when she accessorized her armor with the blood of violent, post-war insurgents in Europe.

(And Isabel knew very well that she would have been one of those insurgents if the war had not ended with goddess holding a tank over her like the blade of a guillotine.)

Diana was intriguing, hypnotizing, terrifying, just as that dagger had been under the lights in the display case.

Isabel expected to be kicked away that first night, shooed off of the stoop by the toe of Diana's boot like a mangy dog. Surely the mercy she had been shown a half-decade ago was a mistake; it was a thought she entertained obsessively each night as she locked doors behind her or fingered the deadly vials in her pocket or claimed a shadowed alcove for the evening’s makeshift shelter. Everyone wanted her dead—the Germans, so she couldn’t sell their secrets; the Allied nations, for revenge; her colleagues, for the simple crime of being a woman smarter than them—and she had no reason to believe that the avenging angel on the tarmac did not truly desire the same.

Besides, in her experience, mercy was a mistake.

She had deserved to be killed that night, her mind pruned from the world like a rotten limb, and she knew it.

So when she fell onto the steps of the Themysciran embassy, pushing the door with what little strength she had left after her fraught trip across the Atlantic, she planned to say something altogether different than what had come out of her mouth.

_Destroy me, Diana. You know I deserve it._

Death by tank, if it was still on the table, was a far greater mercy than the fate that awaited her beyond the embassy’s walls.

But Diana opened the door and her big, dark eyes were sad when she saw Isabel, so the terror and pain and hunger that Isabel felt that night prompted an old invocation once memorized during long hours spent studying dead languages at university.

And so began the longest weeks of her life.

Her wounds were humiliating, and Diana's tender care regularly threatened Isabel with spontaneous heart failure. She healed quickly enough once Diana saw to it that a doctor examined her, and Diana seemed to be growing fonder of her, and she would be lying if she were not growing attached to her hostess...

But still, Diana's spoon-feeding and gentle touches and bared legs and kind words were all too mortifying for her—a revered, feared murderer!—so she reacted the only way she could: with her snapping, caustic wit.

She fell back against her pillow, groaning as her ribs creaked and her hot coffee sloshed over the rim of the mug and onto her hand.

This would kill her, one way or another.

 

* * *

  

_"They come for her, Diana..."_

_"You cannot save her, Diana..."_

_"You cannot save_ yourself, _Diana..."_


	3. Chapter 3

_"You don't see them, do you?" Diana had asked that first night, glancing from the woman at her table to the high windows of the basement kitchen._

_"Who?"_

_Diana nodded thoughtfully. "You don't."_

_No, she imagined that Isabel Maru would have said something about the snake-haired, fang-toothed crones following her if she had known. Supplicants of hiketeia sought safety and self-preservation; the crowing women outside screamed of danger._

“Who?” _Dr. Maru repeated, her voice firm, determined._

_“The Erinyes are following you.”_

_"The Erinyes." Dr. Maru’s hands dropped, her simple sandwich falling onto her plate with a quiet_ thump. _She brushed the crumbs from her fingers, but Diana saw the trembling in her digits despite the casual motion._ _"They exist?"_

 _She leveled a calculating look at Diana and then glanced away, refocusing on the windows, as if she were mentally berating herself. 'But if_ she _exists... Stupid question,' Diana imagined her intoning in her quiet voice._

 _"Yes." Diana kept her gaze steady, confident, and waited until their eyes met again before she continued. "They guard the ancient laws and rites of_ hiketeia.”

_She didn't have time to say anything more, because Dr. Maru was gagging, coughing up soggy bits of bread and peanut butter and bile, and Diana rushed to her side, pulling her hair away from the mess and smoothing a gentle hand over the bumps of her protruding spine._

  

* * *

  

Three months after her arrival, the doctors cleared her to begin working in the offices of the embassy, and Isabel Maru had proven—quite unsurprisingly—to be an extremely useful personal assistant to Diana. She was competent and quick, and she faced the endless busywork of sorting mail and taking notes with endurance that even Etta seemed to lack. Less than two weeks after joining the small team of aides and advisors, she became an indispensable member of the office.

 **Exhibit A:** She brewed an absolutely sinful pot of tea each morning, and Etta swore Diana to secrecy upon admitting that a _Spaniard’s_ tea—said with polite disdain—was better than her own.

But Diana should have realized prior to giving Isabel the job, however, that she was as ruthless as she was productive, because...

 **Exhibit B:** When Isabel discovered that her tea was Etta’s most anticipated part of the workday, she made sure to mention a former professor of hers who had taken an extended leave of absence after advising the nascent Dr. Poison, over tea, that a pursuing smart marriage would be a far wiser than pursuing a doctorate.

So Etta learned to stop sneaking the unbent paper clips off of Isabel’s desk, her own having fallen victim to an unfortunate nervous tick, and Isabel warmed to Etta when that morning’s tea concluded with a story about an uppity young man who had piping hot coffee thrown into his face after he assumed that Etta wanted his hand on her backside.

(And if Diana saw that they both enjoyed the ending of that story more than they should, well, she wasn’t one to put a halt to bonding between two coworkers.)

Although she did not know what to make of their new alliance, she seemed to reap the benefits. She entered the embassy’s main offices on a bright, Tuesday morning, and Etta speaking into the phone, trying to deny what sounded like a request for an interview with Diana. Isabel snatched the receiver from her as Diana passed, barked something mean in harsh German, and slammed the receiver back into the cradle to end the call.

When she caught Diana watching, Isabel simply shrugged. “The Americans still do not like Germans, and the last time you spoke with this rag, they focused on your...” Isabel wrapped her knuckles smartly on the desk, feigning concentration until she suddenly lifted her hand, snapping her fingers at Diana. "Ah, yes, your 'shapely legs and curvaceous’... _armor."_

Diana had to turn away to hide her grin at the display, ducking her head and pouring herself a cup of tea from the warm pot kept on a small end table between the women’s desks. “You should not deceive them.”

“Should… or _shall?”_

Anyone else might have heard only bitterness, but the mischief in that hoarse voice, the slow, almost sing-song, barely-there amusement, had become familiar to Diana, charming in its own sharp, dangerous way. Isabel toed that line of defiance daily, pushing their _hiketeia_ to its limits—Diana would always be the one to set boundaries, and Isabel would have to follow them until she released Diana, if they were to uphold the ancient law—but Diana enjoyed knowing someone who pestered and prodded and pushed in ways that most people in the world outside of Themyscira never dared.

 _Just like Antiope,_ Diana sometimes thought, that hard facade masking the woman beneath.

So she nodded in Isabel’s direction, concealing another smile behind the rim of her mug, and backed into her office to begin the day’s work—this time, finding a lawyer for the embassy who would not book it to the nearest bus stop after meeting Dr. Isabel Maru.

“Should.”

(But to give poor Jonah the benefit of the doubt, Diana supposed that employing an undocumented war-criminal-turned-immigrant known for mass murder and the bounties on her head in indentured servitude did create quite the legal conundrum.)

“I wasn't even lying to him.” Diana heard Isabel mutter to Etta as she shut the door behind herself.

“But what did you say?”

Her response was muffled, muttered into her hand, but Etta’s hooting laughter echoed through the main office and into Diana’s.

 

* * *

 

Isabel pushed off from the marble column she had been leaning on and fell into step with Diana as she waved away a flock of greying men and made for the door.

"Ambassador."

Isabel loathed the word even as it left her mouth. It sounded simpering and enamored when she heard it on the lips of visitors at the embassy, and it always made her sneer at the old men who said it while they condescended to Diana. Diana did not appear to like the sound of it either; she insisted on being called by her first name, ceding the formal _Ambassador Prince_ only to slimy politicians and schmoozing men.

 _(How cozy,_ Isabel once scoffed to herself, knowing that she would have once taken fatal offense to anything but her formal title. But when Diana pulled her out of the way of a car she had been too distracted by petty judgment to see, she stopped mocking her benefactor.)

Still, in the privacy of the embassy, once everyone went home and only she and Diana were left, she used whatever name came to mind at the time— _Diosa, Princesa, Nuestra Señora de la Benevolencia_ —and tried not to grin at the affected outrage that followed.

Isabel cleared her throat and pushed her elbow into Diana’s firm waist. "It is time for mortals to eat."

But Diana never reacted to her little challenges like Isabel expected—a jarring switch from her reliable chemicals and equations—so when a hand patted her fondly on the back and then stayed between her shoulder blades, Isabel simply had to remind herself to breathe.

"We are near the deli. I bet I could convince them to give you something without sauerkraut."

Isabel grimaced. "If you can talk that man into serving you a vegetable sandwich..."

"Then I can convince him to keep his offensive German cabbage away from you." Diana smiled brightly and winked. "But I wonder... You are not opposed to liberty cabbage, are you?"

A low, disgusted noise in her throat made Diana laugh, and Isabel hurried on, tugging the small agenda she carried everywhere out of her pocket. Diana's hand remained on her back.

"You act like I set that damned war in motion myself." It was Diana's turn to make a noise of disagreement, a stern, _might as well have_ noise. "Keep the fermented cabbage away from me, and I shall not slip chicken broth into the next soup I make."

Diana rolled her eyes skyward, a small smile betraying her, and Isabel buried her nose in the afternoon's schedule as Diana led the way.

Because, surprisingly enough, Isabel Maru was not as averse to touch as Diana might have imagined.

She never initiated anything, but the long weeks by her bedside had brought out in Diana the instinctual desire to smooth her hair or stroke her back. The Amazons had been physically inclined all her life; when they were not throwing fists and knives on the training fields, they walked side-by-side, arms linked around each other’s waists. It hadn't been taboo to reach out and curl her fingers in the end of a braid or lean against a friend during the ceremonial feasts that lasted late into the night as she was growing up. She, the only daughter of the Amazons, had been raised from birth having her cheeks stroked and her shoulders patted and her hair braided whenever she sat still long enough, and sitting by Isabel’s bed with her hands folded in her lap without imparting a single, comforting touch felt cold and uncaring.

But Isabel flinched, the first few times that Diana reached out to her. Eventually, she began to lean into the touches, soaking in the warmth of the fingers at her temple, her scalp, her shoulder, but she cast wary glances and batted her away whenever a touch lingered too long. When Diana ventured too close to the twisted, gaping flesh of her scar, she turned away, pressing it into her pillow, as if to deny access to that tender flesh entirely. It endeared her to Diana, even in the early days of their _hiketeia,_ when Isabel was leery and unsure, half-asleep and drug-addled, drinking in those innocent touches like a woman dying of thirst.

Whenever she edged closer to the side of her bed or stared intently at Diana’s hands, she was transparent enough that Diana never felt the need to ask, simply reaching out to take Isabel's hand in hers or smooth the blankets on her lap.

And when Isabel was up and about again, navigating Manhattan on her own, Diana went out of her way to guide the considerably shorter woman through crowds with a hand between her shoulder blades or tuck a stray hair back into Isabel’s bun.

(Once, Diana earned a shocked _“Ai!”_ from Isabel when she tangled her fingers in the raggedy ends of Isabel’s loose hair late one night, but when she jumped away, surprised, Isabel glared over a shoulder, saying in a voice that drifted toward a whine, “That did not mean stop, _Princesa.”_ They sat on the rickety stools at the counter, Diana playing with Isabel's hair while Isabel ignored the entire event while she brought Diana up to date on the classic literature of the past several millennia that was not available on Etta's bookshelves.)

 

* * *

 

But their _hiketeia_ was not all healing and servitude.

Every day since Isabel’s arrival, the Erinyes croaked and crowed at Diana whenever she left the safety of the embassy. Their presence across the street became constant reminder of the burden she accepted with Isabel’s supplication, and no one else, not even Isabel, seemed to notice them.

“You harbor a murderer under the rites of _hiketeia,”_ they sang at her when she passed them on the street, ancient voices cracking. “And her victims seek satisfaction.”

 _Satisfaction_ was _vengeance,_ Diana knew, because hiketeia would always be built upon a foundation of vengeance.

The vows of _hiketeia_ only worked, only bound both supplicant and benefactor, if desperation to avoid vengeance pushed the supplicant to their knees. The presence of the Erinyes only confirmed what Diana knew; Isabel sought her out under the influence of the ancient ways because someone was trying to make her pay for her crimes, and she was frightened.

(And plenty of enraged, unsettled victims who survived Dr. Poison's gasses with scars and pensions wanted vengeance, Diana often admitted to herself, exhausted, late at night.)

The laws of _hiketeia_ were complex, weaved into myth and ancient rites, but the end results were far less complicated.

If Diana allowed any harm to come to Isabel, the Erinyes would avenge her by killing Diana.

If Isabel disobeyed her, the Erinyes would avenge Diana by killing her, and then Diana would die at their hands for allowing them to harm Isabel.

No matter what the scenario, in the end, everyone died— _just like the players in a proper Greek tragedy,_ Diana thought—unless Isabel's desire for protection was fulfilled and she released Diana from her vows.

So Diana should have known that, sooner or later, something would test the Erinyes’ patience.

The streets were crowded in the center of the city near the embassies. Isabel muttered to herself as she crossed items off of Diana's schedule, and then flipped to the back of the book, focusing on notes taken in her tidy scrawl relating to—and Diana had to double-check over her shoulder—the Jules Verne novel that Etta had coerced her to read earlier in the week.

Then a woman gasped, loudly. The heavy, purposeful tromping of winter boots stuttered, first on one side of the street and then on the other, and then sped up as people on the sidewalks ran.

_“Isabel Maru!”_

Diana turned on her heel. With the sharp, trained gaze of a soldier, she assessed the situation: a man across the street, glaring and breathing heavily, a prosthetic hand with the pin of a grenade looped around its wooden fingertip. Isabel inhaled sharply behind her and tangled her fingers in the back of Diana’s coat, hissing into her ear.

“It is a gas.”

Isabel was right. Diana’s spent little time in the trenches, compared to most veterans of the Great War, but the long, cylindrical grenade clutched in the man’s hand foretold its contents. Diana’s eyes flickered between it and the blue sky above, and the minute motion of her head must have alerted Isabel, because she tugged at Diana’s coat before pushing her forward.

“No, underground! Bury it!”

And Diana was across the street, throwing their attacker into the garbage piled in the alley behind him. He landed with a cry and a curse, but Diana ignored him; her focus had narrowed onto the grenade, fallen at her feet, the pin released and the lever let loose.

_“Augh!”_

Her head whipped around. Another man had taken Isabel by the waist, one arm twisted at an impossible angle behind her back— _an accomplice._

Diana grabbed the grenade, punched through the concrete sidewalk beneath her feet, and buried it in the dirt below, stomping down concrete and metal and soil with a booted foot before flashing across the street once more.

 _“Halt,_ Ambassador.”

The man held a gun to Isabel's temple, and Isabel, despite the panicked gleam in her eyes, appeared quite apathetic to the situation at hand. With a tilt of her head, Diana supposed it was something of a blessing to have a supplicant with some experience in chaos; surely, watching two of her labs explode and having Diana herself hold a tank above her head had, somehow, instilled the steely, false calm in Isabel that she saw now.

“She knows too much." The barrel of the gun pressed harder to Isabel's head. "Too much! We cannot let a woman with her knowledge of ungodly weapons continue to live!”

Isabel blinked. Diana gazed back, hardly hearing the man, and the blinking took on a practiced rhythm.

_One-two-three, one, one._

_One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three._

_One, one-two-three, one-two-three._

_One-two-three, one._

Diana lifted her chin, a half-nod of agreement, and Isabel dropped in her captor’s arms, bending at the waist before he could pull the trigger.

And Diana was there, crushing the gun with one hand as if it were nothing more than brittle rock candy. The other landed a punch on the side of the man’s face, below his temple, and he crumpled, dragging Isabel back with him as he fell to the sidewalk.

Diana ripped his arm away from Isabel before she could land on top of him, steadying her unbalanced supplicant by pulling her close and waiting until she found her footing to survey the remains of the scene.

A gasping, wheezing breath, and then Isabel’s head dropped onto Diana, her hands clutching at the hard metal bracers beneath her long sleeves. Diana swallowed hard. Isabel’s breath was warm against her thinly woven shirt, where the slighter woman had unintentionally nosed away the loose collar of her coat.

A siren blared around a corner, and then Isabel pushed her away roughly and dug her hands into her pockets, fumbling with her small notebook and pen as if she expected to find something else, something reassuring, hiding against the seams. She stumbled backwards until her back hit the tall iron fence behind her, watching, scanning for anyone else that might try to put a gun to her head.

"Isabel." Diana said her name, calmly, firmly, just as she might when dealing with a spooked animal. "Isabel, focus."

Isabel looked sick.

Diana pointed to the man on the sidewalk, knowing that she was about to compel the truth from Isabel as surely as if she wrapped the lasso around her wrist herself. “Isabel, listen to me. Do you recognize him?”

Isabel’s snapped to attention at the command, and she nodded just once with a hard jerk of her chin. Diana had to bury the urge to crush the man’s heaving chest beneath her boot in the far reaches of her mind before she acted out the gruesome fantasy. That nagging desire was irrelevant, compared to what she knew, in the very core of her being, that these men had done to Isabel—snapping the bones of her petite supplicant would have been child’s play for a man of his size—and what they still wanted to do.

Sharp, uneven gasps wheezed in and out of Isabel’s throat beside her.

A clash in the alley caught her attention, trash shifting noisily as their first attacker tried to run. Diana brushed a hand over Isabel’s arm as she reached for the lasso in her pocket, and the she whipped it around him with an easy flick of the wrist. It glowed, warming against Diana’s palms, and she yanked hard, pulling him across the street without a whit of care for his wellbeing.

Police cars squealed onto the street, lights flashing, and Diana kept both men wrapped in the lasso’s shining length while she had given a brief statement and made sure that the handcuffs the cops locked around their wrists were secure.

Throughout the chaos, she did not miss the way Isabel stayed silent after the police arrived, her collar turned up over her scar and her hat pulled low, or the way her shoulders heaved almost imperceptibly beneath her coat.

Nor did she miss the Erinyes, peering out from the alley, who only spoke when she wrapped a firm arm around Isabel’s shoulders and led her away from the scene.

_"Hiketeia is not about the supplicant, princess-turned-goddess."_

_"We watch_ you _. We judge_ you, _princess-turned-goddess."_

_"And we will relish tearing the flesh from your bones when you fail her."_

 

* * *

 

"This was not supposed to happen."

Diana could tell that Isabel was not accustomed to having fits of conscience by the twitchy, mechanical way she entered the embassy.

"And _you!_ You are supposed to— This was not—!”

Isabel threw her coat at a small table in the entryway, dropped her hat on top of it, and buried her fingers in her hair. She shook her head, and unseeing eyes flickered back and forth rapidly.

She mouthed the words to herself, and Diana realized that she was reviewing a memory of a text.

"And the police! This is not... This is _not…!"_

"Isabel."

"No, this is not how it works. Not with _hiketeia!_ No!"

"Isabel."

"I came here because they are afraid of you!"

A booted foot stamped, rattling the pedestal that held a bust of Athena. A slim finger pointed at Diana.

"They are afraid of you!"

 _Who?!_ Diana wanted to ask, but she kept her mouth shut tightly. Instead, she crossed the room to stand in front of Isabel, her finger still pointing, and took her by the shoulders.

Isabel froze.

“It appears that they are not as intimidated as you believe.” She took Isabel’s remaining hand out of her hair and tried to smooth the unruly tangles with her palm. "Isabel, you are my supplicant. If anyone takes issue with you, they take issue with me."

"That is _not—!"_ Isabel shook beneath Diana's palms, pent-up rage and frustration painting uneven splotches of red on her cheeks.

"Your problems are mine to dispute." Diana wrapped her arms around Isabel's torso, pinning her arms to her sides before she could tug at her hair again, and hoped the embrace would steady her nerves. "You are mine to protect."

The shivering intensified.

"You have not asked me why I came here.” Isabel sounded equal parts skeptical and miserable.

Diana shushed her. "It does not matter. Only the ritual matters. When you came to me, you threw away your honor and your past in exchange for my protection. You vowed to exist as I saw fit. You saw something in me worthy of trusting, worthy of championing you… Worthy of placing your life in my hands. Whatever happened in the past, whatever you did to earn their hatred—it no longer matters. You are mine."

"Diana—"

"You take my notes. You schedule my days. You eat my food. You sleep in my bed. You are mine."

Isabel shuddered again, more violently this time, and Diana pulled away just enough to look her in the eye.

"When you came to me, I did not see Dr. Poison. I did not see the most feared woman in Europe. I saw a someone who had been starved and beaten and was very, very scared."

What remained of Isabel's lower lip jutted out, a look of great disgust twisting her features, but Diana did not know whether she took offense to the name or the memory of her weakest moment. She didn't care. Instead, she lifted her right hand from the small of Isabel's back, smoothed it over her messy hair, and then brought it down to cup her jaw.

The skin beneath her hand was delicate and taut, mottled and uneven.

Diana raised her thumb, tracing over the pouting half-lip, and pushed it back into place. Isabel held her breath.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," Isabel whispered against the pad of her thumb. The fire in her eyes had cooled, the shaking turned to a tremble that Diana found far more delightful.

"Yes, it was."

And then she was leaning down, replacing her thumb with her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway, facts on facts on facts: Americans called sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" during the first World War, because there was a huge backlash against anything German and marketers still wanted to sell their sour, fermented cabbage to unsuspecting citizens.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (a.k.a. "The Smut I Planned This Whole Damn Fic Around")

Isabel did not speak of the attack or her attackers again.

But in the month that followed, her affections for Diana came in violent, cathartic volleys of affection or not at all.

She pushed Diana back on the settee, straddled her, and compared what they knew of history and science in smooth, sibilant Spanish between kisses, or she locked herself in the bedroom, ignoring invitations to dinner and goodnight wishes until work began the next morning. Her fingers wrapped in a vice around the cool metal of Diana’s bracers while she guided her hands to the places she wanted them most, or she kept her attention steadfast on the dull missives and bland press statements at her desk. She would watch Diana for the shuttered look that appeared whenever they passed the Erinyes and grasp her arm, pulling her toward the street and whistling loudly at the first cab to pass, or she sat primly beside Diana in a subway car, her gaze fixed on the map of the available routes above her head. She slipped into bed beside her late at night, silently, guiltily, and kissed her awake and kept kissing until Diana was satiated and trembling beneath her, or she batted Diana’s hands away, hissing  _“not here”_ and  _“not now”_ like tender touch burned her.

In short, Isabel was as frustrating with intimacy as she was with every other aspect of her life, softened only by the wire-edged charm and heavily guarded sensitivity that first captured Diana’s attention.

Diana tried not to mind it; whenever Isabel opened herself up to those brief moments of closeness, she saw what saved Isabel's life on that tarmac all those years ago in her vulnerable, uneasy expression.

 ****

* * *

 

 _“Isabel.”_ Diana breathed her own name into her.  _“_ _Λατρεία μου..._ _”_

A kiss landed on her scar, Diana’s top lip connecting with her teeth through the gap in the flesh of her cheek, and Isabel released noise of disgust.  _“Stop.”_

The strong arms around her waist fell away, and Diana took a step back, tilting her head down at Isabel. The little turn of her lips and the wrinkle between her brow were hardly visible, but they hinted at hurt and stirred something unpleasant beneath Isabel’s breast. She sighed and smoothed her rumpled clothes, stepping further away.

“I do not need to be comforted.”

Diana’s frown grew more pronounced. “Isabel—”

“No.” A bony hand sliced through the air, and Isabel turned away, tucking the tail of her shirt back into her skirt. “I know what this is—”

“I do not think you do—”

“And I will not be distracted you dragging me into your bedroom for some… some pointless flirtation while you—”

_“Pointless?”_

“Stare out that window—”

“I was kissing you.”

“Like Death itself is coming for the entirety of Manhattan with—”

_“Isabel.”_

Diana reached out a hand and grasped Isabel’s arm, stopping her in her tracks as she paced. With one hand, Diana held her steady as she stumbled, her heart pounding in her chest.

Isabel glared.

“Etta will be angry if you burn a hole in the rug.” The warning was playful, but it fell flat under Diana’s disappointment, and she bristled. She leaned back on her heels, putting as much space between their bodies as she could with one arm locked in Diana’s firm grip, and raised a brow. The expression was mirrored back at her. “I do not know what you think I am doing, but I can assure you my affections are not some unnatural construct meant to distract you.”

Isabel crossed her free arm over her chest, unimpressed.

“They are the very definition of  _unnatural,”_ she spat. “Ask anyone beyond that door.”

“They the most natural thing in the world.”

Isabel scoffed. “Oh? And how many other women have you tried to kiss since you arrived from Paradise Island,  _Princesa?”_

Diana’s lips pursed, and she crossed her arms and widened her stance. The slighter woman accepted the challenge, tilting her chin to meet Diana’s gaze with her own hard look.

“What do you need from me, Isabel?” Diana’s voice was soft, fond, but the undercurrent of steel that was unmistakable. Isabel stayed silent for a moment too long, and Diana’s eyes flickered toward the window. Isabel caught the look and opened her mouth. But, knowing she had been caught, Diana’s expression tightened, her spine straightened, and she towered over Isabel with all the dignity of a goddess and an honorable benefactor  _hiketeia_ combined. Her chin tilted. “Tell me what you need.”

Isabel’s breath left her lungs in a rush of air, scorching its way up her throat. Something inexplicable— _magical,_ she thought with distaste—hooked around her ribcage, wending its way through the gaps like a snake intent on constricting the answer out of her.

Eventually, when it seemed like her ribs might fracture again, she choked, “Your protection.”

“But you won’t tell me why.”

Isabel said nothing, and Diana sighed.

“Fine. Tell me what you  _want.”_

 _“Diana.”_ The warning came in a low rasp, angry, defiant.

“Tell me.” The order sounded saccharine on Diana’s tongue as they heart of the dispute, and, for a moment, Isabel thought bitterly that manipulation did not suit her pretty face at all.

But then the acidic flavor of disobedience burned its way up her throat, and the tightness in her chest doubled.

"Isabel."

Isabel snarled. “You, you  _fucking—!”_

Her back hit the wall before she could spit her insult, and the the impact left her breathless. Diana’s hands gripped her hips, lifting her to meet her mouth in a bruising kiss, and she spread Isabel’s thighs around her waist, pressing closer until the tendons in her legs burned with the stretch.

“Do not finish that sentence,” Diana commanded when she ended the kiss, keeping her eyes locked squarely on Isabel’s. Her lips twitched. “Or you shall break our vows.”

Isabel’s head swam, her vision taking on the blurred haze that told her that her pupils were blown wide, and she pushed against the solid body pinning her to the wall. “And if I want to break our vows?”

“The Erinyes will kill you, and then they will kill me, and I will be unhappy,” Diana said breezily, despite the severity of the statement, and Isabel barked out a single, harsh laugh.

Her hips began to ache, and she wound her arms around Diana’s shoulders.

“Good.” Diana nodded once, sharply, just how Isabel imagined a warrior princess should, as if they had come to a foregone conclusion. She licked her lips and bent her head, trailing damp kisses up Isabel’s jaw. When she spoke next, her voice was low, tempting. _“_ Now, _how_ do you want me, Isabel?”

The warm breath in her ear sent a shiver rocketing up Isabel’s spine, and she grasped at the Diana’s shoulder blades. Her answer was an irritated groan, and she rolled her eyes as she pushed her hips insistently against Diana’s abdomen, answering the tight feeling in her lungs.  “Fuck me.  _Christ.”_

Diana dropped her onto her mattress before she could make sense of what was happening, a loud  _rrrrip_ split the air as her clothes were torn down the middle and pushed to the side, and then Diana was on top of her, spreading her legs with her knees, grasping her wrists above her head in one hand, and pulling her slip up over her breasts.

“Tell me if you want me to stop.” Diana’s lips skimmed the stiff, rosy peak of a nipple. The hand that was not holding Isabel’s wrists cupped the other breast in her warm palm, thumbing over the smooth flesh with her calloused thumb.

Isabel huffed. _“Don’t_. _”_

Diana’s teeth skimmed over her nipple, and Isabel inhaled sharply at the sharp edge of the sensation, the dangerous promise of pain, and pushed herself closer to Diana’s mouth.

But then it was gone, and Diana hovered over her, dark curls falling into her face, tickling at the sensitive edges of her scar. Isabel might have complained if Diana didn’t still her with a stony look, increasing the pressure on her wrists.

“Tell me.”

Isabel shifted, trying to relieve the ache, and the hand cupping her breast dropped to her hip, stilling the motion and pushing her into the mattress.

 _“Tell me,”_ Diana repeated.

Isabel kicked out, connecting with the back of a solid calf, and Diana’s hard facade broke. She smiled fondly and shook her head at Isabel—an  _oh, you foolish, adorable thing_ gesture that might have rankled if she wasn’t licking her lips.

“Fine,” Isabel finally snarled, blowing the long ends of Diana’s hair away from her mouth.

A quick grin, and then Diana bent her head to press a kiss to her lips. She rolled her hips between Isabel’s legs, keeping her pinned to the mattress with the hand on her waist, and Isabel groaned. Only the thin, damp cotton of her knickers separated her from the friction she needed; her pulse thrummed hot and hard between her thighs, in time with every minute movement Diana made.

Diana’s mouth peppered kisses over her scar, her jaw, her neck. When she reached the slope of Isabel’s collar, she dipped her tongue into the hollow at the base of her neck, and then she locked her teeth around the thin bone, sucking hard.

Her mouth came away wet and shining, and Isabel exhaled, her dark eyes locked on Diana’s bright, promising smile. She imagined those lips wet with something else, kissing her with bruising force as she climaxed, and then she was struggling, pulling against Diana’s grip on her wrists and waist.

“Stop teasing.”

“Stop struggling,” Diana ordered, just once, and Isabel froze. They stared at one another, waiting for something; Diana quirked a brow, ran her tongue over her swollen lower lip, and when Isabel said nothing—when she did not open her mouth to spew insults or complain or tell her to get off—Diana took the hand from her wrists and, moving so quickly that Isabel could not see it happen, tore the knickers from her hips in two lightning-fast movements. Isabel scoffed in disbelief as she watched the white scrap of fabric tumble over the edge of the bed, and Diana lifted a blasé shoulder. “I bought them.”

“You bought them to ruin them.”

It was a thought that would have burned Isabel once—someone else buying her clothing—had the entire wardrobe not appeared one day while she was confined to her sickbed, drugged into a painless, grateful high. But a calloused hand was between her thighs, stroking her, and she no longer had the attention span to loathe anything but the slow, teasing pace Diana set.

She ducked her head, swirled her tongue around a nipple, and looked up at Isabel through dark lashes. “Believe what you will,  _Λατρεία μου_ _.”_

A fingertip grazed her clit, and Isabel jerked. Her breath caught in her throat, and Diana repeated the featherlight movement until she moaned out loud. Isabel lifted one of her hands, and then damp fingers were wrapped around her wrist in a vice, pushing it back down.

“Behave, Isabel. I’ve only just begun.”

_“Hurry—”_

The rest of the order was swallowed by a satisfied groan; two of Diana’s fingers pressed into her, the stretch burning just how she liked it, and dark eyes watched as she hid the unscarred side of her face in the duvet beneath her, biting down on the delicate flesh of her bottom lip.

“I told you to behave,” Diana teased.

Isabel huffed again. “I told you to  _fuck_ me.”

Diana’s hand thrust forward, and she curled her fingers upward, smirking when Isabel gasped. She pulled her fingertips against Isabel, finding her clit with the calloused pad of her thumb, and Isabel swore beneath her breath. “Like that?”

Isabel didn’t answer; instead, she wordlessly pushed her hips into Diana’s hand. Diana took the hint and let her head fall against Isabel’s shoulder, tonguing the edge of a red, delicate patch of skin that matched the scarring on her face before she peppered her kisses lower, leaving another dark mark in the shape of her mouth on the slope of a breast.  

Isabel shivered, and Diana pulled her fingers harder against her, pressing her body closer as she kept up the pattern:  _kiss, pull, bite, push, kiss, pull..._

Every bite wrested some small noise from Isabel’s throat, the stretch and pressure of Diana’s fingers barely quelling the aching craving for her climax.

By the time Diana’s teeth grazed her hip, a long line of love bites marked the winding path she had taken to reach it, and Isabel watched Diana trail her eyes up them, meeting her own proudly. Her thumb rolled around her clit, and the heat and tension coiling low in Isabel’s stomach multiplied.

She watched, enraptured, as Diana hooked her thighs over her shoulders and bowed her head.

Another finger joined the first two inside Isabel.

The rest faded into hazy, painful pleasure as Diana’s teeth grazed the hood of her clit, her tongue pressing lazily, insistently against her, and those warm, skilled fingers pushed and pushed and  _pushed_ until Isabel felt like she might break apart. When Diana stopped licking and started sucking, the nails of her free hand digging into her waist, Isabel cursed, loudly, and her back arched, her resolve crumbled, and she came hard against Diana until she could not sustain the tension in her legs and spine any longer and fell, boneless, to the mattress.

Diana didn’t stop, and Isabel climaxed again, with a plea to the woman between her legs rather than a curse, throwing an arm over her eyes.

By the time Isabel managed to rasp “Stop, Diana,  _stop,”_ and push a weak hand against her shoulder, she was coming down from her third orgasm in as many minutes, Diana grinning against her.

 

* * *

 

Diana shifted away from Isabel, wiping the dripping mess of Isabel’s release from her face with her sleeve, and counted it a success when she raked a hand through Isabel’s mussed hair, wrapped an arm around her waist, and buried her face in her neck without being pushed away. Beneath her, the slighter woman still trembled, and Diana pressed a kiss to the smooth, soft skin beside her lips.

Isabel breathed something that sounded like  _Christ, you’re trying to kill me, too, Princesa_ into her hair and then pushed her back onto the bed.

 ****Later, after Diana had been fully repaid for the attempted murder and lay panting beside her, Isabel bent over the edge of the bed and pulled Diana's skirt into her lap. After a long, calculating look, she reached into the pocket, pulled out the glowing, golden length of the lasso, and began to talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This is... totally irrelevant.) As someone who studies the history of clothing… Isabel’s slip/knickers combination isn’t exactly common in the 1920’s (nor is it uncommon), but it is one of the simplest combinations. Beside that, I imagine that she hasn’t worn a corset or corselet since 1910-1914. She’s a woman with a naturally thin physique who prefers simple, efficient clothing—no matter how easy it would be to put on a corset after years and years of practice, she can’t be fussed with adjusting the laces during the war or when she was on the run, and she doesn’t exactly need the support or silhouette that a corset offers for her breasts or stomach/hips/waist. (Also… she just had multiple broken ribs. If she so much as touched a corset, Diana might have snapped her wrist out of spite.) So she wears a thin bralette or a slip and a pair of knickers that are easy to slip in and out of, and make much less of an impact on her bank account than a well-made corset or satin slips. See Etta for the fancier, more structured undergarments of the period!
> 
> Also, I feel like modern Isabel would go braless more often than not. Just saying. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> (And I may have written alternate smut for this chapter in which Isabel is in charge... and I may post it after the rest of this fic is finished.)


End file.
